Ecclesial “Polarisationˮ and Social Dynamics. About Groups of Inhabitants in the Early Middle Ages

Abstract

The history of early medieval communities has been renewed by archaeological research, which has provided a great deal of material data that makes it possible to understand the collective practices that linked groups of “inhabitantsˮ or “neighboursˮ (to use terms that appear repeatedly in the documentary record). These practices concern the division of land into lots, the organisation of paths and itineraries, the setting up of specialist production structures and storage areas, and the development of common places such as churches and burial grounds. To describe these processes of social organisation linked to dominant places, we propose the notion of “polarisationˮ. Places of worship played such a “polarisingˮ role from the 4^th century in cities, then from the 5^th and 6^th centuries in the rural world, in contexts of grouped, distended or dispersed habitat. By promoting exchanges between “neighboursˮ, control of production, mutual surveillance of people and communion between the living and the dead, the social relations and uses developed in particular within “parishesˮ that have become progressively territorialized have contributed to transforming people into co-residents. Finally, we question the driving force behind this socio-spatial dynamic, avoiding the choice between domination imposed from above and collective initiatives from below. While polarisation helped to fix or control populations through mechanisms that did not involve violence, the relationships between “inhabitantsˮ and “neighboursˮ were part of a broad spectrum of social positions that ensured actors certain margins of manoeuvre favoured by the control of at least part of the means of production.